HAVE YOUR SAY
Did you spend more on your classic in 2011 than the previous year?
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| MG Maestro 2.0 EFi |
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Words & Pics Paul Wager You don’t need me to tell you how different car brands evoke completely different images depending on your age. To the car-mad youth of today, a Cooper S is a turbocharged hatchback rather than an A-Series-powered flying brick, while of course a Beetle is a mundane pastiche on a MkIV Golf platform rather than the 22-million-selling air-cooled icon. It’s much the same for MG and for me, as a child of the ’70s and learning to drive in the ’80s, a rubber-bumpered B is just as much an MG as the MG Metro my schoolmates lusted after. Back in the day of course, the badge-engineered MG versions of the mainstream Metro, Maestro and Montego were rather sneered at by lovers of the more traditional cars from TC to B, but with the benefit of hindsight they’ve earned their place in the marque’s history. After all, the recipe for many of the earlier production MGs used ingredients from the saloon cars of the day and this cost-effective approach was key to the marque’s enduring success. The Maestro itself tends to get a bad press but in reality it was a very competent car. Intended as a replacement for the Allegro, Marina and Maxi, the project was the first to dispense with the old ‘ADO’ [Austin Drawing Office’] tag which had been attached to BMC/BL models since the ’50s. Coded LM10, the car broke with BL tradition in being very conventional in its engineering: a transverse engine and front drive were nothing new by the late ’70s, while steel springs were employed instead of any fancy Hydragas or rubber cones. Struts up front and a torsion beam trailing arm rear axle sounded very much like the underpinnings of VW’s Golf and indeed it has been revealed that BL engineers used Golf underpinnings as the basis for the early prototypes. In many ways that of course was key to the car’s success and as launched, the Maestro was a competitive package: the clean lines with the chunky wheel-at-each-corner stance looked fresh and modern if not ground-breaking and the car offered more interior space than an Escort or MkI Golf, with handling to match either of them. It was no surprise to lift the bonnet and find the evergreen A-Series grinning back at you though, this time back with an inline gearbox instead of the gearbox-in-sump design of the Allegro and Maxi. With an electronically-controlled carburettor and a few other detail improvements though, the ‘A Plus’ offered class leading economy and in 1.3-litre form pulled the Maestro along convincingly well. A contender for the 1.6-litre class was created by using the R-Series engine and when a VW gearbox was found to be the perfect size for the job, the decision was made by the accountants to buy the units in wholesale from Germany rather than invest in developing a suitable box in-house.
FACT FILE 1985 MG MAESTRO 2.0EFi
VALUES The MG Maestro is one of those cars where projects abound for just a few hundred quid but decent cars are now so thin on the ground that you’ll struggle to find any for sale. The earlier twin-Webered version has the rarity value but the later 2.0 EFi as driven here is the faster and more usable car. Expect to pay £1500 for a tidy original 1600, rising to £2500 to £3000 for tidy 2-litre cars and more for show standard examples. The best places to look will be the club forums like the MG ’M’ Group at www.mgcars.org.uk/mgm
NEED TO KNOW Hall’s Garage, Bourne, Lincs
To read the complete road test see the September 2011 issue of Classic Car Mart - available here |
We try the GTI beater from the era when it wasn’t a proper MG unless it had red seatbelts. 
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